Devuan Linux has their first stable release today. It is based on Debian 8.0 Jessie and though Devuan release is also called Jessie, it is not going to share the codename of releases in the future.
You might already know that Debian Linux uses the characters of Toy Story for its releases. Devuan, on the other hand, uses minor planet names as release codenames. Jessie is both a Toy Story character and a planet (nr.10464).
Devuan Linux: A revolt against systemd
Back in 2014, when Debian switched to systemd with Debian 8.0 Jessie release, it irked several people. I am not going to detail on systemd vs init debate, just know that a few people were so aghast with systemd that they decided to fork Debian and make it systemd free. And thus was born Devuan Linux.
While most of the major Linux distributions have opted for the newer systemd, Devuan tries to continue the legacy SysVinit. In simpler words, Devuan is nothing but Debian Linux – systemd + SysVinit.
Devuan Jessie claims to provide continuity as a safe upgrade path from Debian 7 (Wheezy) and a flawless switch from Debian 8 (Jessie) to ensures the “right to Init Freedom”.
Devuan is already a movement
If you think Devuan is a far-fetched concept and is fighting a lone battle, think again!
There are already more than 10 Linux distributions using Devuan as the base, even before it hit the first stable release. You can find the list of these distributions on Devuan’s homepage.
How is it pronounced again?
I don’t need to tell you how to pronounce Debian. Devuan, on the other hand, is kind of tricky. Correct me if I am wrong, but I think it is pronounced dev-one.
It’s funny that we hardly care for how these names are pronounced and honestly it should not matter. I mean if you rhyme MATE with late without thinking twice that it actually rhymes with latte, it would make no difference to MATE. After all, what’s in (the pronunciation of) a name?
Download Devuan Linux 1.0 Jessie
You can download Devuan stable release either from the mirrors or via torrent. You can get more information on the download page below:
Is it worth switching from Debian (or other Linux distributions)?
That call is really up to you. If you love Debian but don’t want to use systemd, Devuan is the obvious choice here. For the rest, I say give it a try yourself. Burn a live disk or try it in virtual box and see for yourself.
Good luck Devuan!
In a month, where we saw two Linux distributions being discontinued, Apricity OS and Parsix Linux, it is nice to see a promising Linux distribution growing.
To support their project, I donated $50 (as part of It’s FOSS donation program) to encourage their effort. If you want to contribute in any way possible, check out this page.
Don’t forget to share the arrival of Devuan 1.0 Jessie on social media and other communities :)
[…] new release is based on Debian 9.2. Like Devuan Linux, antiX is one of the systemd-free Linux […]
That doesn’t make sense. Debian already includes sysvinit (just type apt-cache search sysvinit).
It’s more nearly true to say Devuan = Debian – systemd.
Devuan — bringing “init freedom” by reducing your choices.
That’s not seeing the forest for the trees.
Systemd is huge, running a lot of bloat on pid 1. The process with pid 1 is a special process on linux – if that process crashes, the kernel panics, and you have to reboot. For this reason, many linux users don’t like systemd – they feel it makes their system less stable and more prone to catastrophic failures. (There are other problems brought about by systemd – for example binary logs, which become unreadable in case of corruption, corruption being more probable on system crashes – when you’d need logs most, to be able to diagnose the problem. But the bloated pid 1 is the most important concern, I feel. Also, the fear that systemd causes disproportionate problems when not working properly is completely reasonable – there were quite a handful of high profile bugs in systemd, some of which took quite a while to fix. Its sheer structure gave birth to situations which made even booting impossible – configurations which crashed pid 1 on boot.)
The systemd developers are very political, and got many application packagers to designate systemd as an install time dependency of their packages, and many distro maintainers to have systemd installed as a the default init system. This means that for people not wanting to use systemd the distro choices are highly limited. Even on distros still supporting sysvinit or other alternative init systems, it is very difficult to keep systemd from eventually infiltrating your system.
What devuan does is to offer an alternative to such users. By completely banning any systemd component, but specifically including shims or alternative implementations for systemd interfaces required by various applications, devuan makes it possible to use most Linux software available without the hassle of constantly fighting systemd installation. It simply fills a gap left open by the wide adoption and tight integration of systemd in most distributions.
Merci de dénoncer cette (malheureusement) fructueuse tentative de démantellement de la légendaire stabilité de la Debian et de sa communauté d’origine, distribution d’avant cette monstruosité qui a la forte odeur désagréable de ses origines.
Il me semble que le ou les insidieux “morons” viennent d’une firme légendaire pour ses pratiques destructive des libertés de penser. Le caractère insidieux sont certainement les chemins sinueux passant par la puante “REDHAT” (version privatisée de Linux –> not free), concerne une personne que je ne nommerais pas et probablement des motivations à la hauteurs putride de la firme mentionnée.
Je résume:
–> systemd ARE THE VILAINS
–> SysVInit IS THE ONLY FREE WAY FOR THE FUTUR
Merci pour votre compréhension intempestive.
Et je pèse les maux.
Viva La Libertad
Viva La Devuan
We are not so Anonymous.
We are not a ReLegion.
We do not forgive.
We do not forget.
Expect USA.
signé: IBM s/38
Thanks Abhishek for the article. I’m loving Devuan tremendously, and have been using it steadily since RC1. I’ve made a template that I’ve been using in production for a minimal Devuan install under OpenVZ 7 / Virtuozzo 7, so people can try it out: https://github.com/azilber/openvz7